Panagiotis Artelaris, Georgia Pagiavla (p)

Thomas Georgiadis

The 2008 economic crisis and the 2020 pandemic crisis were two significant events of the last several decades that affected most regions of the European Union in different ways. Greece, Spain, Italy, and Portugal were among the hardest-hit countries, particularly during the 2008 crisis. The aim of this study is to assess the resilience of regions in these four Southern European countries at the NUTS 2 level, assessing their ability to react and recover from economic shocks. Despite the lack of unanimity on the concept, economic resilience is, broadly, associated with the ability of an economy to withstand or recover from shocks through adaptive changes and reorganizations to maintain or restore its previous development path or transit to a new, sustainable one.
Two key research questions guide this analysis. The first concerns how crises have influenced regional development and recovery patterns. The second examines the structural characteristics that shape resilience and recovery. To address these, the first step of our empirical analysis is to construct a composite indicator that integrates economic, social, and demographic factors beyond traditional GDP metrics. The second step involves employing spatial econometric models to identify the key factors influencing regional resilience during the crisis and recovery in the post-crisis period.

Thomas Georgiadis (p), Panagiotis Artelaris

Georgia Pagiavla

While the analysis of regional inequalities and well-being using macroeconomic indicators has attracted significant research interest, corresponding analyses based on welfare indicators measured at the individual level remains relatively limited. Utilising information obtained from EU-SILC microdata (at individual level) for the years 2005, 2008, 2011, 2019 and 2023 in Greece, this study aims to provide regional-level evidence on how Greek regions have been affected by the economic crisis and the pandemic across multiple well-being dimensions. This rich database allows us to explore the performance of the Greek regions over a period characterised by significant external macroeconomic shocks, including: i) economic growth (2005, 2008); ii) economic downturn (2011, 2019) and iii) the pandemic (2023). More specifically, this paper aims at addressing the following research questions: 1) What is the state of relative deprivation across Greek regions during the selected years? Are there significant regional inequalities? Has the ranking of regions based on the relative deprivation index changed over time? 2) What were the vulnerability and resilience outcomes of Greek regions over the selected years (including the two crises)? Did regions that were relatively more deprived before the economic crisis exhibit greater vulnerability or greater resilience during the economic downturn and the pandemic? 3) How does the picture of relative well-being vulnerability/resilience outcomes of Greek regions differ when measured using individual-level welfare indicators, compared to conventional macroeconomic indicators such as GDP per capita? What policy implications can be derived from these differences?
In terms of methodology, a composite deprivation index is constructed, to measure household-level relative deprivation across three domains : i) overdue payments; ii) objective well-being; and iii) dwelling conditions. More specifically, we first estimate the relative composite index for each selected year to identify which regions lag behind and by what extent. Then, we pool the data across years to re-estimate the relative deprivation index for the pooled sample, allowing us to examine not only the ranking of each region in each year, but also how they responded to external shocks (testing vulnerability/resilience hypothesis). Through a sensitivity analysis that applies different methodologies to estimate the composite deprivation index, this study provides robust evidence on regional well-being using individual-level data. These findings offer valuable insights for policy design, complementing studies that rely on conventional macroeconomic well-being indicators.

Panagiotis Artelaris, Konstantinos Derdelakos, Georgia Pagiavla (p)

Thomas Georgiadis

Macroeconomic indicators, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), have traditionally been used as a proxy for human well-being. However, many human geographers and economists have recently challenged this mainstream approach, arguing for a broader set of measures that reflect social well-being. Since the ultimate goal of any economy should be to improve human and social well-being, these effects, when possible, should be examined directly through social indicators rather than indirectly through economic measures like GDP. As a result, other social aspects should also be considered, such as life expectancy, educational enrollment and poverty.
The aim of the study is to assess economic and social convergence between regions in Greece over recent decades. Greece has been at the epicentre of significant economic and social changes and continues to experience high levels of regional disparities. The study examines convergence trends using rigorous spatial methods, including inequality indicators, exploratory spatial data analysis, spatial econometrics, and (spatial) decomposition techniques. The results reveal a heterogeneous regional pattern of development in Greece. These findings provide valuable insights for policymakers, helping them better understand and improve the regional development process.